Vintage WWII Airplanes hiding away...

[Shangas]

http://www.aopa.org/News-and-Video/All-News/2014/August/Pilot/f_talltale

A friend showed me this. Kinda cool.

 

[Horace Debussy Jones]

Awesome. Thanks for posting. Hopefully these old birds get good new homes.

 

[mikespens]

Really cool. Hopefully some of the stuff will end up at Paul Allen's Flying Heritage Collection here in Wa.

 

[Treetopflyer]

That is awesome! Definitely hope they all get flying again. Don't get me wrong, I love air museums, but airplanes belong in the air not on the ground as museum pieces.

 

[Stearmen]

I knew both Connie and Tex back in the 80s and 90s. Connie flew P-38s in one of the wars in Central America, can't remember which. He said the government detained him when he came back, but dropped the charges. Tex was a great guy, I remember when he turned 17, I believe he checked out on 17 different airplanes during that time. He was a really humble young man, you would never know he came from so much privilege. We went to Connie's place once, he just closed all the hanger doors after his brother was killed, it was like a bunch of time capsule with all the tools exactly as they were last put down after use. Wish I could afford one of the Buchon Birds.

 

[31 Model A]

All I can say is "WOW"

 

[Otter]

Very interesting article, just shows what can still be lurking around. I always wondered what happened to the planes used in the filming. I wonder if any of the He 111's (OK Spanish continuations) are still lurking around.

 

[Metatron]

Very fascinating. It will be great to see these planes restored. And a one of a kind two-seater Messerschmitt/Buchon! Brilliant.

His observations on the relative performance of the aircraft are intriguing.
The Messerschmitts/Buchons have Merlin engines, so what he says might not 100% correspond to the wartime models.
Still, there were Daimler Benz 605 engines with comparable or more power.
He says the Messerschmitt has the best climb rate of the three. This isn't such a surprise, given the relative power to weight ratios.
He says the Messerschmitt will out-turn the Mustang. Again, not all that surprising as the Mustang has a heavier wing-loading and laminar flow wings vs the slats on the 109.
But then he says the ailerons on the Mustang get heavier as speed increases, and that the Spitfire is worse. From this I infer that he ranks the Messerschmitt as the best of the bunch in this regard as well!!
This is very surprising, as heavy controls at high speed is a vice traditionally attributed to the Messerschmitt in aviation literature.

 

[Stearmen]

Very interesting article, just shows what can still be lurking around. I always wondered what happened to the planes used in the filming. I wonder if any of the He 111's (OK Spanish continuations) are still lurking around.

Supposedly, there are 14 left. I saw one in Kansas back in the early 90s, static display. The only other one I saw, which was flying at the time, belonged to the CAF, it later crashed killing the pilot and copilot.

 

[Horace Debussy Jones]

If only there was a way to make these old planes crash proof, other than just not flying them. There's been far too many crashes recently.